Here's a list for you: the telegraph, the telephone, radio, TV, the home computer... and Twitter.

What? For once it's not the Guardian waxing lyrical about the virtues of Twitter, but Time magazine... or, more accurately Ashton Kutcher - who, you may remember, recently pipped CNN's breaking news account to be the first Twitter user with a million followers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kutcher thinks Twitter ranks up there with the greats of communication (note: no Tim Berners-Lee on there, among others).

Years from now, when historians reflect on the time we are currently living in, the names Biz Stone and Evan Williams will be referenced side by side with the likes of Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, Philo Farnsworth, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — because the creation of Twitter by Stone, 35, Williams, 37, and Jack Dorsey, 32, is as significant and paradigm-shifting as the invention of Morse code, the telephone, radio, television or the personal computer.

Kutcher is almost certainly falling into the trap of hyperbole, but Twitter's simultaneously decided to finally launch a feature that people have been wanting for some time now: built-in search.

Twitter's had some interesting search functions for a while (courtesy of another startup it bought, called Summize) and everyone and their dog recognises that part of the system's strength is the ability to search what people are saying right now (including yours truly). But until now, have always existed slightly separately to the main Twitter website.

But today they added search functions straight into the site itself, giving you the chance of searching across millions of people's streams in real time (you can also see hot topics and save your searches).

Co-founder Biz Stone gives examples of how you might use it: "What was that loud noise outside your apartment? Did you just feel an earthquake? What do people think about your company, your product, or your city?". Perhaps more importantly, for Twitter at least, it also gives them the chance to make some money by potentially placing adverts alongside search results... after all, we might complain if our Twitter stream got stuffed with ads, but if Google can advertise alongside its search results, why not everyone else?